1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image data management technique of editing an image and its attribute information on a display.
2. Description of the Related Art
Recently, with the widespread use of digital cameras and broadband networks, operations which users can perform related to images have diversified and now, for example, include browsing, editing, and printing of images captured by image capturing devices such as digital cameras, as well as disclosing them on networks. Along with this tendency, demands have increased for image data management apparatuses capable of easily managing large amounts of image data.
FIG. 6 shows an exemplary conventional editing window for image data. In this window, designating a folder in a tree view 601 makes it possible to display the thumbnails of files in the folder. If thumbnail images are present in image files or other files, the display displays them. If no thumbnails are present, thumbnail images are generated from original images and displayed in the form of a list in a browser window 604. Buttons 602 (“minimize”, “maximize”, and “close” displayed from the left) are used to control window display of a standard application preinstalled in the apparatus. If the designated folder contains a large number of image files, a scroll bar 603 is displayed on a side of the browser window 604.
According to another conventional example, some server computer discloses icon images to be arranged on a menu window of a digital camera through the Internet. The user of the digital camera acquires an arbitrary icon image by accessing the homepage disclosed by the server computer, and registers the acquired icon image in correspondence with an arbitrary item in the digital camera (see, for example, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2002-185838).
Some camera displays a menu window in which captured images representing, in a user-friendly manner, the respective items for setting operations of the camera body are arranged as icons, thereby allowing even a user who is not familiar with handling of the camera to easily operate it (see, for example, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2002-152566).
According to the above conventional example, the user can arbitrarily set icons displayed on the menu window of the digital camera. However, this camera is not designed to display the attribute information of each image as icons and change the attribute information of an image by operating the displayed icons.
As shown in FIGS. 7A and 7B, when the attribute information of an image is displayed using only text, it is difficult for the user to understand to which displayed item each piece of attribute information set in the digital camera corresponds. It is also difficult for the user to intuitively grasp which operation he/she should perform to change the attribute information of an image.